Triad 3 – Strife and Loneliness

But I realize there’s a snippet missing – the one about “Love/Strife”.

Here’s a bit about it:

In the book Reality by Peter Kingsley, he talks about how history has been twisted by thousands of years of misinterpretation of our “philosophical fathers”, specifically, Parmenides.

For example, according to Peter Kingsley, Parmenides was misquoted to say “judge by reason”, when the original Greek, “krinai logoi”, logoi didn’t refer to reason, or thinking at all. Rather, says PK, if we take context and culture and meaning of the time this phrase was written, it was written by a man with a deep, intimate connection to the nature of “thumos”, meaning “the raw energy of life itself”….a man who actively practiced “incubation”, a practice of isolating oneself in total motionless stillness for days, a practice which would give rise to a silence in the mind, and open into an entire other state of awareness, called “hesychia”, from within which divine inspirations and awakenings and teachings arose…a man who refers to himself in his poem (through the voice of the goddess) as “kouros”, a word not only meaning ‘boy’, but also representing a tradition including “Iatromantis” – healer-prophets – where even the word “prophet” meant different than it does now – nothing to do with future-sight but everything to do with “someone whose job is to speak on behalf of a greater power”… So this “kouros”, in referring to “logoi”, didn’t mean “thinking” at all, but rather, that place of stillness (hesychia) and the teachings from within it. According to PK, the “Judge by reason” which has been the root of all thought for thousands of years, was a grave mistake – “The Greek text as it has been handed down to us is wrong” (p134). Parmenides didn’t mean “judge by logic”, but rather “discern with your hesychia” – PK says, “And this is what logic once used to be. It was a fine, fine thread connecting us with another world: a gift from the gods, a magical lure drawing us into oneness.”

As if that wasn’t enough to rock my world over Christmas, revealing to me that my own inclinations, my own intuitions, may have come to me by pure genetic hard-coding, that the very practice I had been in that two weeks was reminiscent of my ancestors practices, and the voice that’s guided and driven me for so long was one my ancestors were intimately aware of, intimately engaged with…

As if that wasn’t enough, then there was another mindblower (among many PK offers).

This was about the true face of Aphrodite – Love – in his poem. According to PK, we have misinterpreted “Love” as the good-guy, and “Strife” (death, separation, the separate / oneness that is the state of non-duality) as the bad-guy to be avoided — when in fact it is the reverse (if we’re going to play games of good and bad) — that Love is the illusion that lures us, keeps us blinded into the illusion of non-duality…that even as we reach for communion with other, reach for love, we are reinforcing the false limitation-of-perception that says that we are separate, that we are incomplete, in need of other, thus roots our perception into a state of believing this dual realm Is Real…that in fact Strife, Death, is a return to our origin, our original state of non-dual, of oneness with the Infinite Omniscient Omnipresent… That in this manifest realm, “everything is a dream”, and that our true return “home” is thru Strife, death, returning from the blissful deceptive illusion of love and duality and the physical world, returning back again to the non-dual, the oneness. Strife is the good-guy, the Origin, the Source….Love is the illusion we CHOSE to crate, chose to buy into, so that we could enjoy Experience. The eyeball can’t see itself, so if you’re omniscient / omnipresent / infinite, there is no such thing as Love, because there is no other, and there is no contrast. Love is the force that keeps us in “forgetting” who we most deeply Are. “Love traps the soul while Strife sets it free.” (p409). This reminds me of David Deida’s teachings on the duality in the physical realm of Love and Freedom. But I digress.

So now you have an insight into the context, in my core, the context of “Love and Strife” that will make this next third of the triad make more sense.

I’ll call this entry – Loneliness

—————–
So – I had a nightmare about Grady being dead; woke feeling so lonely, so devistatingly lonely

and suddenly i remember….”love/strife”….”the sandbox”….
and while i’m crying i chuckle – isn’t this grief quaint…

“then, connecting with the loneliness of it….i had a sudden ‘epiphany’ about ‘lonely’ not as a bodymind trauma, but as THE ORIGINAL soul-level trauma.”

here’s what i mean

i’d previously had an ‘insight’ about how ‘separation’ was a early
soul-level trauma. the experience of being separate from Infinite Creation,
the frustration of living in a realm that doesn’t create as instantaneously
as Source, that moves more slowly, that takes time to click peices into
place

i’d previously come to terms with the ‘black paint’ entry – the ‘good enough’ -the nature of this realm – flawed by design – there’d be no mutation if not for dna enzymes selecting ‘good enough’ – if it did perfect reproduction, we’d never change, never evolve, there’d be no anomolies available for new outcomes to emerge. the nature of this realm is imperfect. i came into contact with the part of me that had a bodymind subtle-belief i’d been carrying for lifetimes about ‘trying to get it right’, when ‘by design this land isn’t capable of ‘right’, it’s the nature of duality for there to be flaws, to have it all go wrong – that’s WHAT WE CAME here for – imperfect so that we could see ourselves – duality IS the original manifestation of imperfect, where perfect is omnicient/infinite/omnipresent – unable to see itself, to experience and i came to terms with the invitation in this bodymind experience to do imperfect as an act of play in the sandbox – do as best as i can with what i have. to remember that this realm was for play, for experiencing, and to remember not to take the sandcastle making so seriously.

then i woke from this grady dream and i felt – so so so crushingly lonely in the world. so crushingly lonely. then i remembered Peter Kingsley’s ideas around love (coming together, communion, the act of duality) and strife (aloneness, death, stillness) – where he tries to get us to see his sense of the original meaninig in Parmenides writing – which is that strife is really not the ‘bad guy’ to be avoided, but the original source, the ultimate destination, the truth that LoveAsIllusion attempts to obscure, that Love deceives us into forgetting.

and in putting 2 and 2 together i realized – THIS IS the original soul level trauma. If what I knew before (that separation / slow creation frustration is an early-soul trauma), i suddenly saw that this loneliness isn’t a bodymind trauma, but an “Original Sin” – the original soul trauma. It goes like this:

As Source we feel alone – as everything, as infinite, as omnicience,
we know everything, remember everything, so there’s no way to
see ourselves, b/c there is nothing outside of Self to witness Me.
There’s also no way to enjoy Joy, the joy of experience,
or experiencinig a part of Experience, because there is no way
to experience ‘a part’ without remembering the whole.
Thus there is only stillness.

So for the joy of feeling ‘a part’, for the joy of being able to forget
Me As All so that a part of me can see Me, I chose duality. I
chose to Be A Part (to be apart) (to split off into non-omniscient
parts).

Then, here as bodymind, i forget who I Am. And in this forgetting,
I feel lonely, and in this forgetting, I reach for love and communion
– a kind of call to restore to the Oneness that I am – a natural
outcome of the choice to be apart / a part. And in the longing for
communion – Love – i remain rooted in this illusion, this apartness.
it’s the very quest of seeking communion with something else
that is the making of me not whole, not full, not Allness. Love is
the very force that makes manifest reality possible. She is the
very sorceress of this Realm. The paradox is that here in this
Realm where we are all “companioned” as dual beings, we are
lonely.

Then as spiritually awake ones we remember – ah, i find my
sense of “un-lonely” again when i remember who I Am. When I
tune into Me as Infinite Self – i’m not lonely anymore. How can I
be lonely when I Am All Things? When I Am Everything? So as
bodymind I rediscover my unlonely through remembering Me as
Infinite Self. I have access to all. What is there to feel lonely
about?

But then it hit me –

How could I feel alone when I am infinite?
I – infinite – is precisely WHY I feel alone. I Am.
(I am alone + I Am All Things = nondual = singular = Alone!!)

Then, as my journal entry invites, I turned the experience of
lonely back onto Self, looking thru bodymind eyes of lonely,
back to the Self As Lone-ness, As Singularity, seeing the
original “sin” of Original Aloneness Perceiving infinite nonduality.

Lonely seeing Original Loneliness.

and suddenly i felt absolutely calm.

From here, noticing my bodymind experiencing lonely is kind of
funny – it’s the Infinite Joke – strife isn’t a bad thing (but loneliness
feels bad). Strife is the return to Source of Who I Most Deeply Am.
My quest for communion in my loneliness isn’t the sweet
resolution love paints it to be. Love is the very artist creating this
experience of the non-dual world – the very jailer who keeps me
bound in the cycle of seeking another – the very warden who
constructs for me the emotional jail of the illusion that i am
separate and that communing with another will fill me. Commun-
ion with another wont fill me, first b/c this whole realm is an
illusion, and second because the nature of who I am as nondual
IS STRIFE, IS ALONE, IS SINGULAR / EVERYTHINGness. There’s
no escaping it at the deepest level because it Is who I Most
Deeply Am.

“first i had a grady dream, woke crying…”
“then, connecting with the loneliness of it….i had a sudden ‘epiphany’ about ‘lonely’ not as a bodymind trauma, but as THE ORIGINAL soul-level trauma.”

————
we’re destined to feel lonely because that Is who We Most Deeply Are.
there are 2 things we can do with it –
we can buy into The Realm Illusion,
we can choose to forget who We Are, and we can buy into Love –
seeking after love, communion, another to be together with.
and we’ll find moments of respite, maybe even years of it
and we’ll be together with other and remember we’re still lonely
no one will ever fulfill that void, because Void Is Who We Are.
but we can enjoy the illusion and forget for a while if we want.
and enjoy Love.
or we can turn consciousness back onto itself,
finding stillness and peace by being with the Strife that Is.
the nature of Oneness is Singularity – Aloneness.
there’s no escaping it except by forgetting
and in this ultimate remembering, we have a possibility of grays –
we are never alone b/c we are Infinite
we are always alone b/c we are Infinite
we can find Love therefore we’re never doomed to be alone
we’re always alone because the Realm within which love lives,
is just an illusion, and Love is the maker that keeps us here.

My lonliness in the world isn’t a bodymind trauma –
It’s the nature of My Very Soul, Essence.

When I’m feeling the most desperately lonely, I’m not crazy – I’m connected to the experience of Godforce.